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Thursday, March 28, 2024

For decades, the majority of the City Council, together with the city’s administration, has made increasing tax revenue from for-profit housing and commercial development their highest priority. Because the residents of Cambridge have not been the city’s top priority, little progress has been made on protections for renters, affordable housing, ending displacement, addressing the climate crisis, increasing diversity, ending opportunity and achievement gaps for our students, installing community broadband and keeping Cambridge a livable city. The winners of this process have been private developers. The losers have been low- and middle-income residents and their children.

Our Revolution Cambridge is therefore proud to endorse the following candidates (listed alphabetically) who share our values and have proven records of advocating for them:

Dennis Carlone, Charles Franklin, Patty Nolan, Ben Simon, Jovan Sobrinho-Wheeler, Nicola Williams and Quinton Zondervan.

Because these candidates do not take contributions from developers, we are sure they will fight for the people of Cambridge and not for those who wish only to profit from the city.

Our group is broadly concerned with ending income and wealth inequality and reducing the influence of money in politics; fighting climate change; and creating just immigration, foreign and domestic social policy, including housing. Although councillors cannot have a major impact on many of these, they can influence housing policy significantly. Virtually everyone running for City Council claims to support “affordable housing.” But some accept contributions from developers and, not surprisingly, their solution to the housing crisis is to build for-profit, market-rate housing. They argue that by increasing the market-rate supply, prices will drop. There is substantial evidence, however, that market-rate housing development, even when “affordable units” are included, increases prices rather than lowers them, fueling mass displacement of low-income residents.

So what is the solution? Our Revolution Cambridge’s endorsed candidates propose building low- and middle-income social housing on public land and enacting strong tenant protections. Some of these require overturning or getting exemptions from state laws – all the more reason why we need a City Council willing to fight for us rather than for developers and who will never take developers’ dollars. If you believe as we do that the City Council should serve the people rather than developers, vote for our candidates – Carlone, Franklin, Nolan, Simon, Sobrinho-Wheeler, Williams and Zondervan – on Nov. 5.

Kathy Watkins, Fawcett Street
Louise Parker, Warwick Park